All be upstanding for a minute's silence in honour of the demise of a great Australian institution: our local council has announced the end of what I grew up calling 'hard rubbish'.
No more will householders conjointly pile their rusted Hill's Hoists, cracked paddling pools and mildewed three-seaters on the nature-strip. Like so much else, the disposal of bulky waste items has become an individual affair. A discrete phone call, a private visit from the 'resource recovery' people, and it's gone.
According to the council's website this new approach will 'result in cost savings, alleviate entire streets presenting bulk waste, deter scavenging, improve amenity', and 'reduce healthy [sic] and safety risks associated with scavenging'. But what profit is there in such clumsily-expressed gains, if in the process we forfeit something of our suburban soul?
Hard rubbish! From childhood, I've had a soft spot for it. The excitement of strolling the street looking for anything that took my magpie eye. The imagination-stirring possibilities of this bicycle frame or that tea-chest. Never mind that most of my great finds had been thrown out for good reason and ended up being out the front of our place six months later. The thrill was in the hunt.
As an adult, my enthusiasm for what the council calls 'scavenging' has become the source of many beautiful and useful items. A 1950s wooden coffee table, two director's chairs, a filing cabinet, and a plain but serviceable 12 foot bookcase that fits exactly beneath the living-room window.
Plus the bits and pieces for 'upcycling': the clothes drying rack turned into a trellis for the snow peas, the bottles-cum-bud vases, and a plastic geodesic dome that I really must get round to covering in chicken wire as we're getting the hens next week.
That dome remains the pinnacle of my finds. We almost had to forfeit it, as it was far too big to fit in our station wagon and there didn't seem a way to disassemble it. In the end, my partner and I loaded it onto the car roof and drove the three blocks home at walking pace, each with a hand out the car window tightly holding on to our prize. 'Healthy and safety risks' indeed.
Almost as satisfying as finding treasure among another's trash was having your own trash recognised as treasure. One of the rituals of hard rubbish was to regularly inspect your ever-diminishing pile and keep the household abreast